Bitmain Sues Hacker for Alleged Theft of over 5.5 million in Virtual Assets

Chinese based Bitcoin mining giant Bitmain, has sued an anonymous hacker for the alleged theft of 5.5 million worth of crypto from the mining company’s account back in April. The lawsuit was filed with the US District Court for the western district of Washington at Seattle on the 7th of November. The court document stated that the hacker, referred to as “John Doe”, was able to take over Bitmain’s account and use the stored Bitcoin to manipulate the price of Altcoin, Decentraland (MANA) , then stole the profits.

According to Bitmain, the company lost 5.5 million in digital assets and 617 BTC. According to the document, the theft incident happened on 22nd April this year when Bitcoin was trading at $8,935. The document further revealed that the “john doe” hacker used two accounts to carry out his activities. He reportedly made orders from his Bittrex account offering to buy MANAs well as other virtual assets using Bitmain’s Bitcoins at a price that was way above the market rate. The hacker also allegedly artificially inflated MANA’s price using Bitmain’s BTC to buy Ethereum (ETH), which the hacker then used to buy MANA.

The hacker also allegedly executed a few trades in the reverse direction between BTC and MANA from Bitmain’s wallet and then finalized his operation by transferring a considerable amount of BTC from the Bitmain account to a Bittrex digital wallet. Digital hacks at this time of the year are much higher than they were the whole of last year according to a coin telegraph report released last month. A whopping 927 million has been stolen so far this year with efforts being made to curb this menace